


Across The Hurdles Of Our Wishes

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Take Me To The Stars [19]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Babies, F/F, Parenthood, Past Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-07 10:37:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18618931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Missy has a reputation to uphold: the Queen of Evil is a criminal mastermind, a thief, and a murderer, after all.She's not entirely sure where 'breaking into a TARDIS to catch a glimpse of her oldest friend's new arrival' fits into the grand scheme of things. It might be one to leave off the CV.





	Across The Hurdles Of Our Wishes

**Author's Note:**

> While this work belongs within the canon of the 'Take Me To The Stars' series, I consider it to take place a considerable time after most of the works in the series. 
> 
> This accidentally got super deep.

“Stop doing that.”

Missy looks down at the tiny, wriggling… _thing_ in her lap. The thing that is beaming up at her with enormous eyes that don’t quite match in colour, her mouth split into a wide smile as she surveys the total stranger who has lifted her from her cot and carried her into what must be, Missy supposes, rather an exciting room for an infant. The lights of the console room are pulsing slowly, and the wriggling thing seems somewhat amused by this. Missy should be appalled, and yet it’s almost – _almost_ – cute. 

“Stop it.”

The thing takes about as much notice of her words as the chair upon which Missy is sat. In fact, the chair might actually be paying more attention – Missy once enslaved an entire race of sentient chairs, and she likes to think that her reputation precedes her. (This may be an optimistic thought.) 

“Stop smiling at me. People don’t usually smile at me.” 

The thing sits back on its flimsy, useless legs and surveys her in a way that feels distinctly judgemental.

“Gah,” the thing says, sticking one pudgy fist in its mouth and chewing at it with toothless gums. “Gah, gah, mama.” 

“I’m not your mama,” Missy says, hauling it up by the underarms until it’s vaguely vertical and affixing it with a bemused expression. “I’m not either of your mamas. Goodness, you’d think with all that Time Lord DNA that you’d actually have a brain, wouldn’t you? Don’t call strangers ‘Mama.’ It’ll confuse them, and do you no end of harm.”

“Mama,” the thing says again, mimicking the sounds. “Mamamamamamama.” 

“My god, how have humans not become extinct yet?” Missy wonders aloud with exasperation. “You’re hopeless, all of you. I mean, look at you – you can’t even walk yet, much less run.” 

“Agah,” the thing says, – Missy struggles to remembers its name or gender, neither of which had seemed important earlier – reaching for the brooch at her throat, and she tuts and pushes its hands away. 

“No,” she says as sternly as she’s able, shaking her head with considerable over-emphasis. “No, that’s a dark star alloy. Not for babies.” 

“Mah,” the thing frowns a little, reaching for it again, and Missy holds it out at arm’s length. Goodness, it’s heavy. Are all humans this heavy when they’re this small? Or is this a new-fangled modern trend? She doesn’t spend a sizeable amount of time thinking about humans or their bizarre trends and habits, other than when considering the easiest way to conquer their tiny little planet, and frankly now she’s crafted several variations of the perfect plan, even that’s grown wearisome. Maybe she should find a nearby internet uplink and ask it if all small beings are this heavy. “Mama?” 

“We’ve done this,” Missy reminds the infant, attempting to look stern. “I’m not your mama.” 

“Nah mama?” 

“Nah mama, that’s right,” Missy cringes at her own crudeness of language. Adopting its speech patterns, how terribly… ape-like. She is a Time Lady, thank you very much; a being of superior intelligence; the pinnacle of the universe’s evolutionary adaptations. And yet… she’s shaking her head with pronounced emphasis, and repeating in a high-pitched voice: “Nah mama.”

The child sits back on its haunches, considering this new information for a moment, and then tips its head back and starts to scream. 

Missy had thought that she was the connoisseur of screams. After all, one does not ascend to the title ‘Queen of Evil’ without having inspired some truly blood-curdling screams from beings of a wide variety of species, and yet this? This is something else entirely. Loud and piercing and irritating and… bafflingly, utterly heart-rending. The thought causes her to blink hard in consternation, but there it is: this is stirring something in her chest, something old and half-forgotten. It pushes to the forefront of her consciousness, loud and brash and demanding her attention, and she recognises it as her parental instinct.

She might have buried the memories, but she could still see each of her children in her mind’s eye, as clear as the days they had been taken from her, one by one. Their names came to her lips as easily as her own, each chosen to honour some part of the universe she yearned to one day visit, and she mouthed them silently to herself like a prayer. 

Aten and Ophiuchi and Caelum and Tarsus. Nysa and Ceres and Tiphereth and Chara. And Mortain, her youngest, who suffered a fate every part as terrible as the rogue star she had named him for. 

She closes her eyes to the infant on her lap, remembering how Mortain had screamed and clutched at her for protection, desperately clinging to her with his tiny arms. He too had been helpless; unable to walk and unable to run; and that had been his downfall on the day they came for her family. She could still hear how he had cried; looking first to his mother and then to his father in desperation, even as they were forced to their knees at gunpoint and the children were taken outside. 

She swallows hard and then opens her eyes, regarding the infant in front of her with newfound compassion. She lifts the child towards herself and lets its head rest against her neck, resting one hand against the infant’s head protectively.

“There,” she murmurs soothingly, getting to her feet and starting to rock the infant slowly in a way that feels achingly familiar. “There, I know. I know, I’m not mama, but you’re safe with me.” 

The child continues to cry, then blinks as it reaches for the brooch that is now tantalisingly within its grasp and pats at it with a tentative hand. Missy grits her teeth and wills the damned alloy to remain stable, lest it blow them both to kingdom come, and for once it does – it stays put at her throat as the infant clutches hold of it and rests its head against her shoulder. Its wails begin to cease as she rocks slowly back and forth, bouncing the child on her hip as she had once bounced Mortain, and she begins to hum a lullaby to herself, the words spilling from her lips in Gallifreyan and lulling the child into a comfortable state of half-sleep. 

“There,” she says soothingly, pressing a kiss to the infant’s mass of blonde hair. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

Their peace is shattered as the door to the console room slams open and Clara and the Doctor half-fall over the threshold, dressed in their dressing gowns with their hair mussed around their faces, sleep in their eyes.

“Where is s-” Clara begins, before catching sight of the infant in Missy’s arms and letting out an unholy shriek of pain and fury. “ _Put her down, you bitch_!” 

“Clara,” Missy begins in desperation, cradling the infant closer to her chest in response to Clara’s anger. “She’s alright, she’s asl-”

Clara takes several menacing steps towards her, and Missy circles the console, her maternal instincts compelling her to put something between herself and the furious woman intent on taking the child from her. She knows, logically, that Clara has every right to take her own child, and yet she clings to the infant instinctively in a way she wishes she had been able to do with Mortain. She considers speaking again, but the Doctor’s hand shoots out and circles Clara’s wrist, holding her – mercifully – in place. 

“Clara,” the Doctor says, her voice low and urgent. “Clara, it’s alright.” 

“No, it’s not alright! Your psycho best enemy has just… I don’t even know, _abducted_ our daughter in the middle of the night! This is very far from being alright!”

“She hasn’t abducted her,” the Doctor points out calmly, gesturing to the space around them. “She’s still in the TARDIS, isn’t she?”

“Well,” Clara blinks hard as she realises the truth of the Doctor’s words. “She’s drugged her or something, look at her.”

“I haven’t,” Missy says quickly, stung by the accusation. Unbidden, she finds herself explaining: “I just sang to her. That’s all.”

“You _sang_ to her?!” Clara says with contempt, her voice dripping with vitriol. “Since when did you sing?!”

“Since I was a little boy. I sang to all of my children.” 

“Your…” understanding begins to dawn on Clara’s face as she realises what Missy says, and connects it to a long-ago memory in the sewers of Skaro. “Your…” 

The Doctor circles the console towards Missy, holding her arms out with a pleading expression. “I know you didn’t mean any harm,” she murmurs softly to her oldest friend. “But please; please can I have her back? Just for a moment?” 

“I just wanted to see her,” Missy mumbles, her eyes filling with unanticipated, shameful tears as she clutches the little girl and looks down at the floor. “I just… I just wanted to see her, and hold her for a moment. You remember what happened to mine; don’t you? You remember what the Generals did when they found my family?” 

“I know,” the Doctor’s eyes are wide and full of compassion. “And you can see her and hold her whenever you like, but please, you have to ask first. Please, can you pass her to me, Missy?” 

Missy dithers for a moment. She knows that handing the baby back could mean never being permitted near her again – and yet that outcome seems all the more likely if she refuses to comply. With the utmost reluctance, she passes the little girl back to the Doctor, who smiles gratefully at her as she perches the slumbering infant on her hip. Clara rushes forward and places her hand against their daughter’s cheek, and Missy seizes the moment to swipe her sleeve over her eyes.

“Thank you,” the Doctor whispers to Missy, starting to rock in the same way Missy had moments earlier, keeping the little girl asleep. “Why don’t you come in, properly? Have some tea, and you can hold this one?” 

“Because it’s the middle of the night,” Clara complains, and both Time Ladies affix her with a look. “Oh, right.” 

“Time machine,” Missy reminds her, raising her eyebrows fondly. “Do keep up, dearie.” 

“Yes, alright,” Clara rolls her eyes. “Doctor, shall I take Elanna?” 

The Doctor passes their daughter over, and the little girl stirs as she finds herself in the third pair of arms in as many minutes. Missy watches with an aching heart as the little girl blinks up at one of her mothers with a soft smile before looking around for the Doctor and then sticking her thumb into her mouth happily, seemingly satisfied. 

“Mama,” she mumbles around the thumb, looking between the two of them with contentment. “Mama, mama.” 

“Yes, darling,” the Doctor says softly, stroking her curls back from her face and smiling at her in a way that Missy recognises with an intense sadness. She had not, after all, been the only one of them to have had a family, and she remembers the terrible price that the Doctor paid for some of her so-called crimes during the Time War. “Mama.”

“She tried that out on me,” Missy blurts, trying to find a way to lighten the mood. “Had to have a chat with her about stranger danger… not that her mothers ever take much notice of such things.”

Clara laughs a little then, the little girl on her hip looking around the room with her mismatched eyes – one a bright, sparkling green and the other deepest, richest brown – before nestling into her mother’s shoulder with a sleepy murmur.

“So you should try to teach her about it,” Clara says lightly, wrinkling her nose at Missy. Now that her child is back in her arms, she seems more at ease, and for that Missy is grateful. “No-one stranger than you.” 

“Rude,” Missy feigns great affront, placing her hand over her left heart and trying to come up with someone who was, in fact, much weirder than herself. “There’s Jim the Fish.” 

“This might…” the Doctor yawns, stretching her arms out and rolling her shoulders before running a hand through her hair in a bid to tame it. “…be a discussion to have over a cup of tea.”

“Good idea,” Missy acquiesces, looking expectantly towards the depths of the TARDIS from whence they had appeared. “So, are you making, or am I?”


End file.
